


it's a lot like a game, 'til you're dead

by arbhorwitch



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 01:44:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbhorwitch/pseuds/arbhorwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After everything, Newt takes a moment to (try and) breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's a lot like a game, 'til you're dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opensoulsurgery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opensoulsurgery/gifts).



> for melissa bc she inspired me to see this movie 
> 
> dear god i love this movie so much i fell in love with newt and charlie day i never meant for this to happen i'm so sorry

It’s not a clear night, not when he goes to sit up on the ledge and watch the waves crash below against the shore; the rain is thin and misted, leaving his skin damp and blinding his glasses. He’d go to wipe them off on his shirt, but it’s still bloodied and it’d be futile, anyway. There’s loud cheering down in the ‘dome, electrified and ecstatic, and he should be too—he should be cheering, he should be socializing, but really, there’s nothing but an empty, hollow ache in his chest cavity and the lingering strings of drift residue in his mind.

He kicks his feet. The material of his pants is ripped, stained blue, soaked with rain. He continues to kick his feet. It echoes; the ocean is deep enough to drown.

When he was a boy, he wanted to be a soldier. When he grew up, he wanted to tear apart skin and sinew and figure out what made monsters tick. Now he’s got everything he wanted and more, yet there’s no excitement bursting inside him, rushing his veins with adrenaline; rather, he thinks about Stacker and the notes left on his desk, and he thinks about Chuck and what it means to outgrow your children. He thinks about corpses and ice water, and he hears the distant screaming of demons dying and dead. He knows Hermann can hear them, too—and he thinks about the tape sitting behind a vial on his side of the room, thinks about burning it, thinks about tossing it over the ledge and letting it find the charred remains that rest along the ocean floor.

He thinks. Newt is used to thinking, but he’s not used to sitting still, and the shaky aftershocks of drained mania leave him vaguely sick and sober.

(he wants to get blackout drunk, make the world fuzzy around the edges, but he’s never been good with slowing down.)

“It’s rather cold out here, don’t you agree?”

“It is,” Newt replies. The footsteps pause, a good few feet away, and he doesn’t have to turn around to know Hermann is wearing that hideous parka. It’s comforting in all the ways it shouldn’t be.

Hermann says, “The first night with no threat of an attack,” and Newt says, “The first of many firsts,” and it’s easy and tense all at once. Newt wants to hit something, mostly himself, if only to be able to feel the cold.

“It doesn’t look good on you.”

When he was a boy, he wanted to be a soldier. When he grew up, they told him it was unattainable, and that he should stick with what he knows best—and so he did, insanity and ambition bleeding into bravery and _fortune favours the brave, dude_ , and he did what they said he could never do. He proved them _wrong_ and even now, even with the voices and the ghosts, he knows it was the right decision, was their best bet for getting that date with destiny; even now, they’re free, and he doesn’t want to mourn but it’s all he can do. He knew Chuck, but didn’t know him well; he knew Stacker, and knew him in that way people came to understand their friends. He knows Herc, and maybe that’s why it hurts. Funny, because he’s seen people die before his eyes and it’s never tasted as bitter as it does now. He’s seen an entire universe explode, has the blood stains under his eye as testament.

“Man, it’s just weird, you know? It’s over. Doesn’t feel over. Feels like there’s something we’re missing, but I can’t fuckin’ find it.”

“Perhaps you’re looking too hard at something that isn’t there,” and he hates the Voice of Reason, hates that this man understands him and always has, hates the lack of venom and the warmth beside him as Hermann takes a seat.

The water continues to lap against shore and he’s finite feet high above the ground, he kicks his feet and it echoes; the ocean is deep enough to drown, to kill, but inviting all the same. A fixed point.

He’s seen the inside of Hermann’s brain and managed to distance himself, to let the rabbit jump down the hole and find Alice, and Hermann has seen inside him; it’s all rather strange and intimate, but there’s the taint of kaiju buried somewhere in there as well, a sour taste in the back of his throat from the poison. His only successful drift partner is a man who never wanted to be a solider, because soldiers are promises, not equations on chalkboards. Newt may not be Alice, but he thinks he may have found the rabbit all the same, and isn’t that fucking great? He doesn’t have many secrets to spill, what he has are thousands of seconds and minutes of lost time.

And, see, Hermann understands. He gets it. And Newt has never felt more like Alice than he does now.

“You get that look on your face,” Hermann starts, snagging a cigarette from inside his coat pocket and holding it out to Newt. He takes it, because Hermann doesn’t smoke. The lighter follows. “Whenever you’re deep in thought, you get that look. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve wanted to smack it off with the butt of this cane.”

“And damage the goods? I don’t think so,” but at least they’re back to joking and teasing, and soon arguing, and Newt takes the cigarette and wraps his lips around the end; Hermann holds out the lighter and the smoke curls up into the air, quickly washed away as the rain picks up. It’s getting cold.

“I never said I’d go for the goods,” Hermann reminds him, as he would a child. Smug bastard. “I would _never_ danger the specimens.”

“Pentecost is dead,” he says suddenly, taking a long drag from the cigarette. His fingers shake the smallest amount. His nose might be bleeding again, but the wad of tissue is still shoved up there, so he doesn’t really care. “Somewhere in that water, he’s there. Weird.”

Hermann doesn’t say a word, never does, always sits in silences and boiling waters; Newt taps his fingers against the concrete and stares up, a cliché building on his tongue and nesting in his bones. He thinks about getting another tattoo. Names are rather permanent, but so are demons.

“I guess what they say isn’t true, which is hardly surprising.”

“Hm?”

Hermann laughs, just a little bit bitter, just a little quirk of his mouth. It’s wrong.

“Only the good die young.”

He kicks his feet and it echoes; the ocean is deep enough to drown, deep enough to bury. Newt thinks about touching the sky.

(hermann taps his shoulder and disappears back into the shadows, and newt finishes his cigarette. tomorrow, they will rebuild and restart; tomorrow, he will breathe, and his lungs will work in tandem with his heart. tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. for now, newt follows him into the dark.)


End file.
